Israel is asking the United States for $8bn (£5bn) in loan guarantees — and has sent to Washington Amos Yaron, one of the former army officers implicated in the 1982 Sabra and Chatila massacre of Palestinian civilians to persuade the Bush administration to grant the money. Robert Fisk writes in The Independent.Read more about Israeli at US loan talks is implicated in massacre

On the road to Basra, ITV was filming wild dogs as they tore at the corpses of the Iraqi dead. Every few seconds a ravenous beast would rip off a decaying arm and make off with it over the desert in front of us, dead fingers trailing through the sand, the remains of the burned military sleeve flapping in the wind. “Just for the record,” the cameraman said to me. Of course. Because ITV would never show such footage. The things we see — the filth and obscenity of corpses — cannot be shown. First because it is not “appropriate” to depict such reality on breakfast-time TV. Second because, if what we saw was shown on television, no one would ever again agree to support a war. Robert Fisk writes in The Independent.Read more about The human cost - 'Does Tony have any idea what the flies are like that feed off the dead?'

Thank God, I often say, for the Israeli press. For where else will you find the sort of courageous condemnation of Israel’s cruel and brutal treatment of the Palestinians? Where else can we read that Moshe Ya’alon, Ariel Sharon’s new chief of staff, described the “Palestinian threat” as “like a cancer – there are all sorts of solutions to cancerous manifestations. For the time being, I am applying chemotherapy.” The Independent’s Robert Fisk continues on to note that meanwhile, mere criticism of Israel outside the country gets you labeled an “anti-Semite”. Read more about How to shut up your critics with a single word